Posts Tagged ‘Pinera’

The recently inaugurated government of President Michelle Bachelet issued a timely mea culpa this month in an effort to press the proverbial reset button on long frayed relations with the Mapuche, Chile’s largest indigenous group. Read the rest of this entry ?

Taking the podium last month for his fourth and final state of the nation speech, President Sebastián Piñera delivered a resounding toot on his own horn, citing an array of facts and figures to make the case that Chileans are better off now than they were when he took office three years ago. The approach looks to have paid dividends: a poll released in early June showed a six-point bump in Piñera’s approval rating. But with Chile’s next election just five months away, the president’s conservative coalition still has some convincing to do if it hopes to stay in power beyond March, when Piñera is set to leave office. Read the rest of this entry ?

A flurry of school occupations and street protests has provided a sudden burst of momentum to Chile’s student-led education reform movement, which had laid conspicuously low in recent months following its tumultuous rise to prominence in 2011. Read the rest of this entry ?

A flurry of arson attacks, land occupations and violent police raids have refocused public attention on Chile’s long-simmering “Mapuche conflict,” which is once again showing signs of boiling over. Read the rest of this entry ?

President Piñera delivers his next-to-last May 21 address (congresochile/flickr)

President Sebastián Piñera had at least on thing going for him during last month’s state of the nation address: silence. Unlike in 2011, when hecklers interrupted him on several occasions, attendees for this year’s May 21 speech – an annual tradition in Chile – kept their mouths shut, giving the former businessman ample opportunity to sell the public on the merits of his two-and-a-half-year-old government. Read the rest of this entry ?

Just when it looked like Chile’s weary president, Sebastián Piñera, might finally enjoy something of a summer respite, an intra-coalition blowout over the country’s controversial binomial electoral law has put him back in the political hot seat. Read the rest of this entry ?

The recent nuclear disaster in Japan’s tsunami-damaged Fukushima reactor has shaken – but not buried – plans for an atomic energy surge in South America, which right now has just four of the world’s 442 nuclear power plants. Read the rest of this entry ?